Perdido Street Station

By: China Mieville

Narrated by: John Lee

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies.

Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released.

The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station.

It is too late to escape.

©2003 China Mieville (P)2009 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

Winner of the August Derleth Award

"Primal awe and erudite references have always mingled in Miéville’s work—along with a healthy dose of pulp playfulness.”—The New Yorker

“Flawlessly plotted and relentlessly, stunningly inventive: a conceptual breakthrough of the highest order.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Perdido Street Station is brimming with enchantment. Written in intense, evocative prose, set in Dickensian New Crobuzon, peopled with characters of Boschian demeanor and diversity . . . the book flourishes and shuffles the conventions of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.”—Tordotcom

Great mood, story doesn’t deliver

The world is the star of this book, more than any of the characters. Very strong, evocative opening, but then we get to a save-the-world-with-ineffable-powers kind of story, and it mostly stops being about the weird city life, a kind of shallow superhero plot, that feels like someone recounting an experience from the roleplaying game. You really had to be there.

Surprised

At first I thought this was not going to be all that enjoyable then i quickly realized this was a truly original story and one of my favorite for the rest of my life. It’s dark and brutal but so very original.

This was a really refreshing take on fantasy

I listened on a few recommendations. t
The setting is fascinating and experly built. the political subtext is up my alley as well. the narration was excellent.

WHAT AN AMAZING BOOK!

This book single handedly reignited my love of reading. China Mieville is what I aspire to be as an author.

So very good, but the ending killed it for me

Any additional comments?

This is a very well written book, and Mieville is a very talented writer. He has a wildly vivid imagination, and he was able to transport me thoroughly to his world he has created. It did take me a little to get into the story, because Mieville's writing style is pretty unique and it took a while for my brain to synchronize with his imagery. Once I got locked in though, it was pretty awesome. It's basically a steam punkish world, with sci-fi and fantasy all mashed together,and mashed together brilliantly. I was wondering when I would finally listen to a book like this, and I picked a very good one to start with.

His character descriptions, to include all of the amazing different races were stunning. He just didn't lightly touch on each character in this world, but really fully flushed out each one, including even the minor ones which just made this world that much deeper.

Mieville developed a pretty basic main story-line, but it was really just used as a fulcrum for all of the sub-plots and the shadow plot-line. Just reading the summary of the book, I didn't think it would hold me attention, but I was riveted until almost the end.

Now, I do have one huge problem with this book, and it's purely personal. Mieville made some choices with how he ended this book with some characters and some of the plot lines which I hated, and pretty much tainted the whole book for me. For a writer of Mieville's obvious talent, he really picked some of the lame duck endings that sub-par writers would choose, and he knows better. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but you'll understand what I'm talking about when you see them.


Overall, this is a very good book and I love Mieville's writing style. If you've always wanted to listen to a world with very strong steam punk influence, sci-fi, fantasy, and any other cool genre you've liked than this is the book for you. Mieville is able to merge all of these worlds seamlessly and was such a treat to venture into. Just for my personal preference, I hated the ending, but for most of you out there this may not be an issue. Even with the lazy ending, I would still highly recommend this story and I"m looking forward to some more Mieville books.

There are no words...

I say there are no words but I must say SOMETHING as this is an incredible book. China is one of my favorite authors now and I will read all his books. I have a short list of maybe 3 or 4 authors I can this about and Mieville is one of them. I read true crime novels, sci-fi novels, fantasy, thriller and horror novels. Im not into many fantasy novels as I find many of them too "whimsical" or childish. That said China is not that. While yes this is a whimsical sort of fantasy novel it is certainly adult and mature. If you like crime, thriller, horror, OR fantasy/sci-fi you WILL LOVE this book and probably his other nobels too. READ THIS ONE! Its WELL worth the credit OR the cash!

Booooring....

Endless stacking of three and four word descriptions is not the same as actually world building. Almost 5 hours in and still Nothing noteworthy has happened yet.

Recommended

I do not recommend this because it is a perfect novel. It is a flawed novel, in many respects - stylistically uneven, rough, hard to like, characters overpowered by concepts and action(s), an author trying too hard to impress, to force an atmosphere, a feeling on the reader. There are inconsistencies in the characters and their actions. I also feel the author did not have the endurance and strength to write this - or: rewrite, edit, this as one single book. Instead, it ended up more like two books, or maybe one book taking off in the direction of another book.

But it is also a fascinating melange of ideas, and a hard to describe, imaginative look at another reality, described with a voice of his own by the author, who always, in the end, can take his work wherever he wants. And I may personally prefer flawed works by determined authors to polished works off a production line.

Interesting plot/characters, difficult writing

The world and characters of this book are amazing and deep, and the plot is intriguing and kept me interested, but it was hard at times to sit through the overly lengthy and wordy descriptions of literally everything. There were scenes that could have been a 10 word sentence that went on for 15 minutes. I listened to this while traveling and there were times when I would drift off for a couple minutes and miss nothing because it was still describing the same scene. The author has an unfortunate habit of overusing odd words, which really make them stick it. My traveling companions and I made a game of pointing out every time the words "desultory" and "pugnacious" were used. It probably would have been fine to read, but listening to it really made those words stands out. Overall, I did enjoy this book, but it's fortunate for me that it wrapped up pretty well, because I really don't have it in me to sit through two more books like that.

Beautifully told but a little disappointing

Really fascinating world building and a lyrical writing style, but I wasn't fully satisfied with the way the plot wrapped up. I kind of expected the book to be focused on one character but they were kind of written out halfway through, so I was disappointed. Definitely worth your time though!